


Tech Support

by telm_393



Series: The Fourth Floor (a.k.a. The Magnificent Seven 2016 'Sitcom' Modern AU) [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cats, Cross-Generational Friendship, Gen, Humor, Older Characters, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 09:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9541127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: In which Red Harvest is the only person with the ability/patience to help Jack Horne (and Sam Chisolm) navigate modern technology, so he is tasked with helping Jack set up a new laptop, which is exactly as painful as it sounds.In related news, Red Harvest is probably on his way to sainthood.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe a borderline crack sitcom AU series in which the Seven live in the same apartment complex and get into shenanigans is my first thing in this fandom.
> 
> (However, this is NOT written in script format. Think of it as a novelization for a show that doesn't exist. Or a fanfiction with delusions of grandeur.)
> 
> This is a prequel/'teaser' for the series. The first episode is actually going to be Josh moving in and meeting his Zany Neighbors.
> 
> Thank you to within_a_dream for betaing!
> 
> Also: this was a bit inspired from a prompt I saw somewhere on Tumblr that called for Red Harvest teaching Jack how to use an iPhone, and then I started thinking 'what about technology in general' and 'omg what if this happened' and then quite suddenly I got to 'sitcom AU'.
> 
> There are more details about what this is a teaser FOR after the fic, which I hope you enjoy!

“Power button's here,” Red Harvest says, pointing it out on the keyboard and then pressing it for good measure.

“Ohhh,” Jack murmurs, as if it had actually been a mystery.

This is not off to a good start.

When the computer actually turns on, the language options pop up, and Red Harvest takes initiative and chooses ‘U.S. English’ before Jack can even touch any part of the laptop, because Red Harvest doesn’t want anything ridiculous and borderline inexplicable to happen that ends up with everything being written in Afrikaans or something. The thought makes him have flashbacks to setting up Sam's computer.  

He presses the little ‘continue’ arrow.

“Why is there a map?” Jack asks, baffled.

“To choose where you live,” Red Harvest explains, even though it’s pretty obvious, he thinks. He clicks ‘United States’ and presses 'continue'.

"There are different kinds of keyboards?"

“Yes,” Red Harvest says flatly, though even he's not sure why, or what the difference is, but he selects the U.S. keyboard. There’s a little flag next to it. He’s always thought that that’s a nice touch.

The screen asks to connect to a password, and Red Harvest checks the notes on his phone where he's written the name of Jack's WiFi network and password, hoping Jack will just take Red Harvest having this information at face value and not ask why, exactly, he knows it when Jack himself doesn't.

(It's because Red Harvest already secretly went through the very painful process of Googling his way through setting up the WiFi connection, and he's not sorry, because if he'd had to do something that complicated with Jack there it probably would have become a Very Distressing Situation, so he'd waited until Jack was out and no one else was around to let himself into Jack’s apartment so that he could figure out the router and the modem and the whole mess.

It doesn't count as breaking in. Red Harvest has a key.

He's still not going to mention that he did that, though, mostly because it would involve admitting that he went to those slightly ridiculous lengths not only because Jack didn't need to be there but because he really didn't want to call tech support and he knows Jack would've suggested it if Red Harvest had gotten stuck and Jack had realized that he was taking so long because he was having trouble and then Red Harvest would've said he could do it by himself and Jack would've said there was nothing wrong with asking for help and Red Harvest might've had to explain that his problem with tech support is actually that it involves talking on the phone and why couldn’t Jack do it even though he knew that Jack would just get confused at the tech-speak no matter how simple and then Jack would've said something like _I know these are modern times but you can't always avoid the phone and anyway you can mostly use it with me and Sam can’t you_ and it would've devolved from there, and what's the point of that when Jack can just assume that WiFi is magic and sets itself up and also that the router's always been plugged in no really?

He wishes he could do something like that with the new computer too, but that would be pushing it.)

Red Harvest clicks 'A5555-HOME’, and when the computer prompts for the wifi password, he slides his phone over to Jack so that the _notably old_ man can see it, and then waits while Jack enters it at a glacial pace. He is not surprised when the computer says he entered it wrong, though he's not happy about it either. Mostly, he's neutral.

Being neutral helps in situations like this. See, Red Harvest is not a particularly emotive person, especially with the way he talks, and he's not easily frustrated, at least not with other people, and he’s definitely not easily angered, and honestly, he's the only one willing to help with these things, which is why he's stuck doing this job.

Sam would be next to useless because he’s old and also knows nothing about technology, Vasquez is a little hotheaded sometimes, so he’s out, and even Goodnight and Billy, who aren't that much younger than Jack and Sam ( _excuse me?_ Goody says in horror whenever Red Harvest so much as implies that) but have at least a solid working knowledge of technology, have given up when it comes to helping them navigate modern everything.

But Jack and Sam have helped Red Harvest in a lot of ways, all of his friends have, so Red Harvest also helps everyone in a lot of ways, or at least all the ways he can, and if that involves not jumping out the window when he realizes he’s going to have to actually teach Jack Horne to use a laptop, so be it.

Red Harvest is chill. He is so chill that he doesn’t mind the fact that Goodnight and Vasquez choke back laughter and even Billy has trouble keeping a straight face whenever he says that because they think he sounds like a robot.

Anyway, the point is that he has taken on this burden.

“Red,” Jack says. “Some help here?”

Red Harvest blinks and realizes that he spaced out again. That’s how it is with him: single-minded focus or nothing at all. He switches back to single-minded focus (by choice, because he can do that now), and looks back at the computer, frowning when he finds that Jack hasn’t reentered the wifi password. “Password's th-there.” He points at his phone, which he placed next to Jack in full view.

“It turned off,” Jack responds. Sure enough, the screen has gone dark.

Red Harvest doesn’t roll his eyes as he presses the button that’s literally right there, front and center, to turn the phone on, slides his finger across the screen, and there. There is the password. It’s still written in his notes. Maybe it’ll be there forever. Maybe he’ll be here forever. He doesn’t know. He’s chill.

“See?”

“Oh, well, that’s how you do it, huh?”

“Yes. Now password.”

(Red Harvest is dreading the day that Jack gets a smartphone. He already went through that with Sam. It wasn’t pretty.)

Jack enters the password. Very, very slowly. Again. At least Sam can type. Red Harvest wishes he were helping Sam right now, which is only something he wishes when he’s helping Jack. The password doesn’t work yet again, and Jack lets out a huffy breath, clearly starting to feel frustrated.

Red Harvest doesn’t think he’d wish this on his worst enemy. Then again, Red Harvest’s worst enemy is the telephone, so that’s a pretty empty thought, even though actually it’s not that empty a thought when he remembers that he’s never inflicted Jack on phone tech support, which, they’re welcome.

(Other enemies: germs, the U.S. Postal Service, supermarkets, and the washing machines in the basement, none of which ever seem to work like they did last time he used them, even though he pays money for those things to wash his clothes. _Several quarters at a time,_ in fact.)

Red Harvest sighs inwardly, and then has a stroke of genius that prompts him to write the password down on an actual piece of paper.

It seems to make something click in Jack’s mind, and he finally types the password correctly, which is good. Red Harvest was starting to think he’d written it down wrong in the first place, and he hates making mistakes, even though, objectively, he makes a lot of them. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

The next step appears. “Transfer information to this Mac?” Jack says with barely controlled panic. He should really read the entire page before freaking out. It’s not actually that bad.

“No. It's if you have another Mac. Don’t transfer.”

Jack does not transfer. A nonexistent crisis is averted.

“Enable location services?” Jack asks, sounding suspicious. “Is this trying to track me?”

“You can say no,” Red Harvest reassures.

“Will it listen?” Jack responds, still suspicious. “It’s normal for them to take your information now, you know. Maybe buying this thing was a bad idea.”

Red Harvest grimaces and, not asking who ‘they’ are, because ‘they’ can be anyone depending on the day, says, “It’s fine. We all have one. No one is getting tracked.”

“What about hacking?”

 _Why would someone want to hack your computer?_ Red Harvest wants to ask, and then he thinks about it and doesn’t. _Why_ is a terrible word. “It’s okay. I’ll check if you’re ever...worried.” Which will probably be a lot, and it’s not like Red Harvest actually knows what he’d be checking or how to figure out if someone’s being tracked or whatever, but Jack doesn’t have to know that, and Red Harvest does, in fact, have empathy, and is completely willing to reassure Jack that Tech Bandits aren’t going to come through his (extremely locked) window at night and murder him or whatever he thinks might happen.

Jack carefully disables location services, and moves along. Actual crisis averted.

 _Sign in with your Apple ID_ , it says. Jack does not have an Apple ID, and he’s narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the computer again. “The Cloud? Is that a cult?”

“A computer cult? No. It’s just a th-thing. It makes all your info be the same on all devices. You have no Apple ID. We can...we can make one later. It's not needed now.”

“I don’t think I will,” Jack says. “A cloud,” he mutters to himself as he moves on, shaking his head. He pauses again, and Red Harvest groans inwardly. Outwardly, nothing happens. He doesn’t think it would, even if he tried. Showing outward emotion isn’t his strong suit. “It wants my full name? Why?”

Red Harvest has never really asked that question. “Just enter it.”

Jack grumbles, but goes along, apparently trusting Red Harvest enough to believe that nothing bad will actually happen.

 _Jack Horne_.

There.

“Account name? What’s the difference? This is awfully complicated, isn’t it?”

Red Harvest tactfully doesn’t say, not really. “Put your name again.”

Jack shrugs, bemused, but does it. “Oh, the password!” he says brightly. Red Harvest is sure that he’s determined to make his computer password as bulletproof as possible, and okay, he’ll support that. To a reasonable extent.

“I can...write it for you,” Red Harvest offers. “You enter it. So I’ll have it and you will. I won’t tell anyone. But you.”

“Of course you won't, Red,” Jack murmurs. “Good idea. Go on, then.”

Red Harvest obediently writes a random string of about eight numbers and letters, which seems to be enough for Jack, though it takes him approximately sixteen years (okay, five minutes, but that’s still a long time) to correctly enter it. Red Harvest wonders how he’s going to manage when he’s on his own, but that’s why he went with eight numbers and also has the password with him. It’s in deference to Jack’s terrible memory.

Time and date are obviously not enabled, since Jack doesn’t seem to want to “allow” his Mac to do anything, and that would involve location services anyway.

Red Harvest disables everything having to do with disk encryption and iCloud, clicking past it in record time, hopefully before Jack can see any of it, because he really doesn’t want to explain what “disk encryption” is, since he’s pretty sure it can be pretty easily twisted to sound sinister even though it’s actually not, and they’re not enabling it anyway.

He doesn’t manage to get past Siri fast enough, though, and Jack asks, “What’s Siri?”

“It’s like a, a search engine but it speaks,” Red Harvest says, which isn’t super accurate, but it’s not like he uses it, because he’s not about to anthropomorphize (he learned that word from Goodnight, because sometimes he does actually listen to him) a robot voice and look like an idiot talking to it. He has more pride than that. And he doesn't like talking.

“Don’t enable that,” Jack says decisively, and Red Harvest nods, even though he already knew.

“Good choice,” he responds, and then, finally, blessedly, there’s a spinning wheel on the screen, and under it is written _Setting Up_ , and Red Harvest has narrowly avoided death from actively internalizing every impatient feeling he’s had for the last hour.

(Usually he only passively internalizes his feelings, which is much easier.)

Finally, finally, finally, the actual screen is there, mountain screensaver and all, no more setting up, and Red Harvest says, “I’ll help you start using it another day. I have to feed Purple.”

This is not true, since he fed his cat a short time ago and has, in reality, only been here about an hour, but he’s not going to keep going. He doesn’t get paid enough for that.

(He doesn’t get paid anything.)

“Alright, Red, thank you,” Jack says genuinely. “I guess I’ll just…noodle with this. Can’t be too hard, huh?”

Red Harvest is not entirely sure of that, considering their prior odyssey, but he nods anyway. “Noodle carefully,” he warns, and then he’s gone before he remembers to say goodbye.

There’s no one in the hallway, but Red Harvest can see that a moving man is setting the new guy’s things up, since there’s furniture blocking everything.

(Red Harvest knows that the moving man and the new guy are not one and the same because he has been reliably informed, by Goodnight, who knows everything, that the new guy is going to be here the day after tomorrow, so he is apparently the kind of person who hires a moving man. Red Harvest is not sure what kind of person that is.

Also, at some point Red Harvest was reliably informed of the new guy’s name, now that he thinks about it.

He either immediately forgot it, or didn’t listen in the first place. It might start with a J.

It’s not like he has to care yet.)

Red Harvest climbs over a couch that is not nearly as nice as his couch, which has far more character, and is finally, finally in his apartment, safe from technology and old people and—

His phone vibrates. It could be someone competent, but the sense of impending doom he feels thinks otherwise.

Sure enough, it’s Sam. Sam, who very recently upgraded his ancient dinosaur phone to an iPhone, and is still trying to figure it out. Red Harvest thinks Sam’s mostly sort of gotten the hang of it (and it only took about a week of mild torture), but as his phone vibrates several times in quick succession, he realizes that they never really went into texting, and wonders how he missed that.

Red Harvest sighs, and checks his very first text—sorry, texts—from Sam.

**Red**

**I**

**Think**

**The**

**Damn**

**Texts**

**Are**

**Broken**

Red Harvest rolls his eyes, pinpointing the problem.

_You have to press space not send_

**That makes more sense thank you**

Red Harvest hopes that that’ll be the end of it, but the hope is futile.

**Where are the little drawings the phone has**

_Emojis?_

**The computer keeps mentioning them I was wondering what it was talking about**

_If you press down on the button with the little circle next to the space bar they pop up._ Huh. It’s easier to do this over text. Red Harvest hopes Sam will get the hang of it and he’ll be able to stop talking over the phone with him, because Red Harvest does talk on the phone, okay, but only with Sam and Jack and only with overwhel—sorry, somewhat mild anxiety.

**Interesting thanks**

Sam follows this text with three skull emojis.

Red Harvest blinks at the screen. _You can use more than one kind at a time._

The only thing Red Harvest gets back is a string of skull emojis.

Red Harvest narrows his eyes.

_There are more emojis than the skull_

**I know**

Sam punctuates _that_ text with a skull emoji and, okay, now he’s just being a dick.

 _Bye._ Red Harvest types this with a period at the end and everything. It might be a little blunt, but today has been draining, what with going to work and then finding out that Jack had finally gotten the new laptop and being roped into hating Apple even more than he already does.

Red Harvest sets his phone on the edge of his coffee table and flops onto his couch, resting his head on the perfectly square patch of duct tape keeping the left arm of the couch together, because he will admit that there are several large tears on that particular place. That is a fact. Still not enough for Red Harvest to give his couch up, though. It’s a good couch. He’s had it since he moved in. He’s not going to let it go, whether it’s “falling apart” (Goodnight’s exaggerated words, not his) or not.

It’s real fake leather, after all.

Red Harvest can hear the moving guy, still, which gets him thinking about the new tenant, who he’s not nervous about even though the new person has bought the apartment and so probably will not be leaving soon even if he’s terrible, but Red Harvest has had good luck with the inhabitants of the fourth floor, so he has hope. Sort of.

While he’s thinking, Purple decides it’s a good idea to sit right on his chest. Red Harvest moves his head a little to avoid getting suffocated by her long fur, and adjusts his breathing to deal with the Maine Coon resting directly where he assumes his lungs are.

Red Harvest pets her, combing his fingers through her soft dark gray fur, and despite the slight constriction of his breathing, he likes the extra weight on his chest, and that, coupled with the feeling and sound of her purring like an engine, lets the stress of his Mac-filled day melt away. Not that it was much stress, because Red Harvest doesn’t really get stressed, but.

He’s sometimes still impressed with himself for not kicking anything (or anyone) when technology and old people (well, the only old people he cares about, though everyone else is also kind of old, now that he thinks about it) are involved, and he does find it gratifying that everyone else is impressed by his patience too, because he’s not that good a person and he likes it when people think he’s doing something well and that’s half the reason he even does nice things.

Red Harvest sighs as well as he can with Purple curled up on his chest, and when she finally adjusts herself so that she’s sitting up on his stomach (still heavy), staring at him with a thoughtful expression, he frowns and asks, “What?”

Purple does not respond. Red Harvest doesn’t take it personally.

Some kind of furniture screeches across the floor of the new guy’s apartment, and Red Harvest is forced, again, to contemplate the reality of his and the fourth floor’s changing situation for a moment. He decides to be optimistic about it, because he’s been trying to figure out the subtleties of  'positivity' lately, since he’s already working on 'feelings' and all.

“Maybe,” he muses to Purple, “the new person will be normal like me.”

Purple looks very unconvinced, and Red Harvest nods as best as he can while half lying down. “You’re right. No one’s normal like me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look. LOOK. I got this idea into my head, and then it just EXPANDED. Anyway, this will be a series gleefully playing with sitcom tropes. There will also be other 'episodes' that aren't part of the 'season'. I will call those 'Special Episodes' and angst bombs will be included. Since this is in the 'verse but not part of the 'season', this is a special episode.
> 
> There will also be angst in the series proper. Like, we're dealing with Serious Issues every once in a while, and all the characters *have* Serious Issues, and there are lots of Emotional Moments. It's all very earnest and heartfelt, I'm playing that completely straight.
> 
> I really love sitcoms, guys, and this series is an affectionate parody of them and love letter to them and I am having a blast and //pitch// I guarantee you will too! (I can't guarantee that, but I hope you have almost as fun reading it as I am having writing it.)
> 
> I have every episode of the season planned, and a couple written. 
> 
> There's more information on the series page, including pairings for all you shippers. Yes, there is established Goodnight/Billy, they're the Beta Couple. Also warnings.


End file.
